Book Reviewing in a Digital World: #FollowReader Recap

How do major book reviewers select books, and how much has social media and other technology changed the way they discover new titles? Do print galleys, pre-pub reviews and trade shows matter any more, as digital tools expand and print review outlets continue to shrink?

Those were some of the questions we explored with Lev Grossman,Time magazine’s book critic, technology writer and Nerd World blogger, and Carolyn Kellogg, who reviews for the Los Angeles Times and writes the Jacket Copy blog, last Friday our #followreader discussion on Twitter (October 30, 2009).

Among the highlights:

Social media buzz is gaining importance, but it can’t make up for a book that doesn’t deliver

Paper galleys are most desireable because taking notes in them is easy

Standalone e-readers are still too expensive for these professional readers

Some reviewers pay more attention to publisher marketing efforts than others

Small houses do have a shot at getting reviewed

Becoming the author of three novels has made Grossman wince at what he used to say in his reviews

Reviewers do regret it when they miss the chance to review good books

Here’s the full conversation:

What makes you sit up & decide to review a book?

@leverus: Have your publicist tuck a $50 right around page 100. Works like a charm. Not many people know this. #followreader

@Corb21: we tucked 1,000,000 dollar bills in our books once…funny, but not necessarily more reviews. #followreader

For myself, in theory I’d love to get more digital copies of books to review, but in practice everyone’s trying to give me PDF format and that doesn’t work so well with my iPod Touch. And since I don’t have another ebook reader– I need paper versions.

Re: publishers marketing stuff: I appreciate innovative, interesting new marketing techniques (viral book trailers, maybe), but it gets really annoying when, like, 50 bloggers all have 5 copies of the same book to give away. Then it’s overkill and it makes me not want to read that book at all.

Re: bottom-up reviewers: I do trust “regular” people’s reviews more than professional reviews, mostly because a) I’m a regular person myself (who reviews) and b) I feel like I “know” those regular people better than the professional people and I attach more weight to their opinions. Like how I attach more weight to my IRL friends’ recommendations more than Netflix, for example.

But now I’m remembering that drama from a few month ago about how professional reviewers are pissed off at amateur reviewers because…they’re not professional? It’s a whole big thing, and it makes me really happy that Lev and the others aren’t shooting us regular people down.

This is a really awesome post, and I’m sorry I missed the original discussion. :D I’m glad I got to butt in here, though! I just lurve giving my opinions, ha.

About

Follow the Reader is the blog of NetGalley (www.netgalley.com), a place where professional readers — reviewers, media, bloggers, journalists, librarians, booksellers and educators — can read and request digital galleys they want to review.